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(born Laura La Plant on November 1,
1904 in St. Louis, Missouri; died October 14, 1996 in Woodland
Hills, California)
 La
Plante made her acting debut at the age of 15, and in 1923 was named
as one of the years WAMPAS Baby Stars. During the 1920s she appeared
in more than sixty films. Among her early film appearances were Big
Town Round-Up (1921), with cowboy star Tom Mix, and the serials
Perils of the Yukon (1922) and Around the World in 18 Days (1923).
The majority of her films (i.e. from 1921 to 1931) were made for
Universal Pictures. During this period she was the studio's most
popular star, "an accomplishment duplicated only by Deanna Durbin
years later." Her best remembered film is arguably the silent
classic The Cat and the Canary (1927), although she also achieved
acclaim for Skinner's Dress Suit) (1926 with Reginald Denny, the
part-talkie The Love Trap (1929), directed by William Wyler, and
Show Boat (1929), adapated from the novel of the same name by Edna
Ferber. Quite unusual for its day, a scene of La Plante in Show Boat
was broadcasted on early British television.
The advent of 'talkies' effectively shortened her career. Only in
her mid-twenties, La Plante proved to be a quite natural and
appealing presence in early talkies but the huge wave of new stars
in those years overshadowed her. She made her last appearances for
Universal in the Technicolor musical extravaganza King of Jazz
(1930). For a while she free-lanced, appearing in The Matrimonial
Bed (Warner Bros., 1931), directed by Michael Curtiz and co-starring
Frank Fay, and Arizona (Columbia,1931), co-starring a young John
Wayne.
La Plante subsequently went to England where she appeared in several
"quota quickies", including Man of the Moment (1934), with Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr. |
